


Welcome to  the mad house.

by TayBartlett9000



Series: The men from the ministry say 'yes,   minister.' [1]
Category: Yes Minister, men from the ministry (radio)
Genre: Britain, Comedy, Gen, Government, Humour, Ministry, Politics, Whitehall - Freeform, general assistance department
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24285343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TayBartlett9000/pseuds/TayBartlett9000
Summary: It is time for another sprint down the coridors of power as Bernard  Woolley, a keen young executive, spends the first morning of his first day in   politics working for the men of the general assistance department, men who are often out to lunch entirely
Series: The men from the ministry say 'yes,   minister.' [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1753150
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	Welcome to  the mad house.

Welcome to Whitehall, the well upholstered seat of our government, a government full of men who exist to carry out the vital work of the nation. This story is a tribute to the men of our government service, men who are often compared to the chairs in which they sit, men who either fold up instantly or go round and round in circles.

Bernard Woolley, a bright eyed and keen young executive, joined the governmental staff at Whitehall feeling excited. He had worked dillogently at school and then at university to become one of these astounding governmental men and as he stood outside the door of the office of Mr Derek Lennox-Brown, he thought with gratitude that this position suited him particularly. Bernard was good with paperwork and writing. His teachers and university lecturers had always told him so and now it appeared that someone was finally going to appreciate it. Jolly good.

It was half past seven in the morning. Bernard had arrived at least two hours earlier than he had been asked, so eager was he to begin his work as an official member of her majesty’s government working for the general assistance department. He stood outside the door of Derek Lennox-Brown’s office, wondering what the man and his chief assistant, a man called Richard Lamb would be like. Bernard had never met either one of them. He was finally ready to do so though and without further preamble, Bernard lifted a hand and knocked on the door, almost bursting with excitement.

“Come in,” a female’s voice called from beyond the sheet of solid oak that was the office door and with a smile, Bernard opened it and stepped inside.

It was a vast room, the walls of wich were lined with filing cabinets. Perhaps they were all full of official government documentation, documentation that Bernard Woolley would now have the privilege to view. It was a brightly lit room with large windows that overlooked the Whitehall carpark. Not the best view, but it was a decent enough view to be going on with.

Standing by the window was a young woman with short brown hair and a smile that looked to Bernard to be several football pitches wide. “Morning,” she said loudly in the voice of the ckockney, “You’re Bernard Woolley, aren’t you?”

Bernard nodded, suddenly conscious of how unspeakably upper class he would sound once he finally opened his mouth. “Yes,” he said after what seemed to be an age of awkward silence, “I’m Bernard. Who are you?”

The young woman was beaming at him. “My name’s Mildred Murfin,” she replied, “Didn’t Mr Lennox-Brown tell you?”

“Tell me what?” Bernard asked, confused. Had he missed a message? Had he in fact missed something extremely important on his first day? 

Mildred was still smiling. “Oh,” she said brightly, “He should have told you not to come in so early. Mr L B and Mr Lamb don’t usually come in till eleven o’clock.”

Bernard was shocked. Eleven in the morning, when government business waited for no man? Impossible.

But alas, it was far from impossible. Bernard and Mildred sat alone in the office of the aforementioned Lennox-brown for what felt like hours and what actually turned out to be quite a few hours until the man himself finally arrived. Now, at long last, Bernard Woolley would be able to show the men of Britain’s government service precisely what he was made of.

“Ah, morning Mildred!” Derek Lennox-Brown shouted as he strode into the office, his boler hat positioned squarely atop his head, “has Sir Gregory been in yet?”

Mildred shook her head. “No, not yet, thankfully.”

Lennox-Brown smiled at took a seat at his desk, apparently completely unaware of Bernard’s presence in the room. “That is good news,” he said brightly, “he may expect us to do some actual work if he finds us in here. I don’t think I can face it this morning. I had a late night, Mildred. Didn’t get to bed until ten.” The man heaved a heavy sigh and closed his eyes for a moment. “Oh, glory,” he groaned theatrically, “they expect so much of us here at the ministry. So much. A bit too much to be frank.” ”

Mildred nodded. “I’ll go and fetch us some tea sir.” She disappeared from view into a room that Bernard had not been into as yet.

Bernard and Lennox-Brown were left sitting in awkward silence for almost too many minutes to count. All that Bernard could hear was the incessant ticking of the clock on the wall, that is however until Derek Lennox-Brown decided to speak.

“What are you doing here, boy?” he asked, looking to Bernard as if he had never seen the likes of him before in his life, “this is the general assistance department, you know. What business do you have here?”

Bernard wasn’t entirely sure what to say. It seemed to him that Mr Lennox-Brown had no idea who he was or what he was doing here. “Did you not get any notice, sir?” he asked.

Mr Lennox-Brown frowned. “I don’t know exactly,” he replied, confused. He rose to his feet and wandered as if aimlessly over to one of the office’s many filing cabinets. Bernard leaned forward, eager to see the organisational standards that had made her majesty’s government the wonderful thing it had become. Lennox-Brown pulled open his selected filing cabinet and began to rummage around.

Bernard had rarely been so shocked in all his days. Instead of finding piles of neatly stacked, neatly typed paper heaped inside the drawr, Bernard caught sight of several small pots in which a grass-like substance could be seen growing from within the darkness. What on Earth was it? It looked like… but it couldn’t be… But it was.

“What’s in that drawr?” Bernard asked, “is it water cress or is it confidential?”

Lennox-Brown shook his head. “No. It’s definitely water cress.” He slammed that particular drawr shut and opened a second one, this drawr containing a pair of slippers and a boler hat. “Where did he put it?” Lennox-Brown muttered, rummaging around in a third drawr that seemed to be filled with naught but tea cups and packets of chocolate biscuits.

Bernard had never been so appalled. Where were the neatly ordered piles of paper? What was this unholy disorganisation in aid of? He had expected a highly organised department to which he could dispense some of his universitylearned skills. 

“Ah, here it is,” Mr Lennox-Brown said finally, pulling a letter out of God only knew where and smoothing out the many creases it had obtained while being stuffed at the very bottom of the drawr. Opening it and reading through the contents, Mr Lennox-Brown nodded and smiled at Bernard. “Of course,” he said cheerfully, “I remember now. You’rethe new boy, aren’t you? It turns out we did get a memo about it but we filed it in the wrong drawr by mistake. It’s Bernard Woolley, isn’t it?”

“It is, sir.”

The older man did his best to stifle a chuckle, and failed miserably. “Bernard Woolley,” Mr Lennox-Brown said with a wide grin, “that’s fitting, isn’t it? Woolley? Very good.”

Bernard was puzzled. “What’s funny, sir?” he asked.

Derek Lennox-Brown shrugged. “Oh, forget it. It’s a ministry joke. You’ll understand at some point.”

The door to the main office opened again and a skinny middle aged man entred, his own smile about two yards wide. Bernard hadn’t seen this man before but guessed that this man was Richard Lamb, Derek Lennox-Brown’s chief assistant.

“Good morning, one,” Mr Lamb said brightly as he slammed the door behind him, “everything going alright is it?” His eyes shifted to Bernard who was still slightly confused. What on Earth was going on? He had expected to enter this office to be given a pile of work that would carry him through till lunchtime but alas, things were not going the way he had expected. Far from doing work, these two men were wasting time on idel chit chat while they grew cress in their filing cabinet and lost urgent letters. He couldn’t for the life of him understand it. How did the country continue to run with this level of blaightant incompetence and inneficiancy?

“I suppose we’ve got a lot of work to do today, sirs,” Bernard said hopefully, looking from the face of Lennox-Brown to the face of his chief assistant.

“What is he on about?” Mr Lamb asked quietly as if Bernard Woolley had both gone mad and lost almost all of his brain cells. 

Bernard was determined to have his say. He needed to find out what was going on. “I’m saying that we’re bound to have a lot of work to do today.”

Mr Lamb’s face cleared of its confusion and he smiled broadly. “Ah yes, you’re right, a lot of work. A lot of work indeed.” 

“Oh good lord yes,” Mr Lennox-Brown said cheerfully, returning to his chair and biting into a chocolate digestive, “absolutely. We have a lot of work to do today.”

Bernard grinned. “Good, what would you like me to do?”

Mr Lennox-Brown turned round and pointed to a vaze of flowers standing in full view on the window sill. “You can water those for a start,” he said, “me and Lamb will get on with the rest of our jobs. I’ll go and scrub the tea pot and Lamb, you go and hang mi boler hat on that peg over there. And then we can go to lunch.”

“Already?” Bernard asked, horrified, “but what about all of the government’s important paperwork? Official documentation and things like that?”

Lennox-Brown merely smiled at him in a manner far too complacent for Bernard’s liking. “Oh, no need to worry about that,” he told the younger man happily, “we’ve already taken care of that.” He pointed at the window sill upon which sat a long row of neatly folded paper aeroplanes. “Lamb’s getting very good at those, you know. We’re having a competition with the office next door to see who can fly their own paper planes the farthest. Good, isn’t it? It’s ten to one that we’ll win, you know. We won last year. Now if that’s all, I think we can go to lunch now. I need a break from all of this work.” 

Bernard was growing more and more confused. Work? They hadn’t done any work yet. It was barely eleven o’clock and already the men were intending to go to lunch. What had happened to all of the paperwork? This was the general assistance department. This particular government office was supposed to exist in order to assist any ministry that was overloaded with work and yet this lot didn’t seem to do any. “But…” he began haltingly, “but… what about all the asignments?”

“What asignments?” Mr Lennox-Brown sounded disgusted at the very idea. 

“Like the important work for transport, education and that sort of thing. Isn’t the government meant to work around the clock in order to keep the country running?”

Mr Lennox-Brown and Mr Lamb gave each other darkly significant looks. “Don’t be foolish, Mr Woolley,” Mr Lennox-Brown told him gravely, “we can’t go around doing work willy nilly, you know.”

“Why not?” Brnard asked.

“Because, boy, it might start a panick. This ministry relies on getting funding from the government while being as inconspicuous as possible.”

Lamb nodded eagerly, keen to impart some wisdom to somebody who he obviously believed to be behind the times. “He’s right, you know. Last year, we had to go on strike because of a nasty situation involving a new ministry tea making scheme and the department was on strike for three weeks before anyone noticed.”

Lennox-Brown again took up the explanation. “That is how this department works. If we do too much work then we will be in danger of showing the country that the government is capable of actually governing the country. And if they find that out, then the public and the prime minister will begin to ask more and more of us. We’re already snowed under with difficult tasks already.” 

“But why is that a bad thing?” Bernard thought back to his business studies, economics and politics lecturers at university and began to compose what he hoped would be the best speech any junior executive had ever performed. If the rest of the members of this department were in any way similar to these two individuals, then Bernard considered his hopes of that to be very high indeed. “I mean,” he began loudly and obviously, “this government is here to make sure that the country is governed effectively. Is it not? It is important for us to show the rest of the ministries in power that we can make a difference if we try hard enough. The nation elected us and it is up to us to carry out their wishes.” He paused here, suddenly lacking for something grandious to say to conclude his opening speech. Finally, he settled upon, “or at least, that was what my lecturers told me.” It wasn’t the best ending but Bernard thought that it would do to be going on with.

A long pause followed Bernard’s not so well chosen words and for a moment, Bernard thought that he had managed to get through to Lennox-Brown and Lamb. They certainly seemed to have taken notice, for they sat there with twin looks of horror as if Bernard had uttered a disgusting swear word rather than a declaration of keen interest in the plight of the nation.

But then, Bernard’s beliefs in the power of his words was shattered utterly. “We’ve got a right one here,” Derek Lennox-Brown muttered darkly, staring at Bernard as if the young man was an escaped criminal rather than a observant young government hopeful, “you’ve never worked for the ministry before, have you?” he asked gravely.

Bernard shook his head. “No, sir.”

Lennox-Brown nodded. “I thought not. I thought not. You have a lot to learn, boy.” He rose to his feet again and smiled at Bernard. “I think you’d better come down to the canteen with us. We’ll tell you how the government really works. It’s very interesting you know.”

Bernard nodded, rising to his feet and accompanying Lamb and Lennox-Brown out of the door and into the corridor. His university lecturers hadn’t told him of this. They had prepared Bernard for a career spent working harder than anyone else in the working sectors of Britain but now that he had entered government service, he was beginning to realise that life as a ministry executive was quite different from that which he had expected. He could only smile and nod as Lennox-brown began to take him through the many and varied reasons why working in the ministry was frowned upon. There was indeed going to be an awful lot to learn, and it was only his first morning. 


End file.
